Tiger Milk (20 page)

Is that the card?

Yeah, I say, but there’s no address on it, Mama must have thrown out the envelope.

Why do you want an address, asks Jameelah, you want to write to him?

I was thinking about it.

Have you searched him online?

Yeah but there was nothing. There were so many people with the same name, over 900,000 results.

Give me the card, says Jameelah stuffing a cookie in her mouth. Whitney Houston is singing ‘I Will Always Love You’ in the background. Just don’t cry, I think and swallow hard.

Watch it with your strawberry fingers, I say.

It’s fine.

Jameelah opens the card and frowns.

This is impossible to read, she says, the writing how can you read that writing?

I don’t know, I always asked Mama to read it to me but she didn’t want to, she refused, I say looking at the scrawl, typical adult writing, you really can’t make out a single word. Jameelah squints and leans over the card tracing the scrawled writing with her finger.

Wake
? No that can’t be it, doesn’t make sense.
Make
maybe? That’s it,
make like
and then the next bit is illegible again.

I take the card out of her hand.

Sandal
or something like that, I say,
make like a sandal
? No that’s stupid.

Sun something, sundial,
make like a sundial
, says Jameelah, if that’s it then I know what it says.

What?

It says
make like a sundial and count only the hours when the world is bright
. It’s some kind of saying, I read it somewhere. See, look, it also would fit with the words, says Jameelah pointing to the second line of scrawled letters.

True, I say, and then
with love, Papa
. That was the only part I could ever read before.

Why would somebody write that on a birthday card, says Jameelah.

What?

You know, make like a sundial.

Who knows, it’s just a saying.

Just a saying my ass, abandoning your family like that and then telling your daughter to make like a sundial. That’s fucked up.

You think so?

Yeah I do. Do you have a photo of him?

I get up and go to get my photo box out from under the bed and then I see it, Amir’s shoebox is there and I’m supposed to get rid of it and I’ve forgotten to and I’ll have to take care of that later, I think, once Jameelah’s gone because if she catches wind of it she’ll definitely want to open the box or whatever, that’s just the way she is.

I pull the box of photos out from under the bed, here I say, handing a photo to Jameelah.

Papa has me on his lap and is playing chess with the person who shot the photo. I know for a fact that Mama took the photo. If I didn’t know it for a fact it would never occur to me that Mama had ever played chess. Mama and chess are about as far apart as I don’t know, whatever the farthest apart two things can be is.

Never seen him, says Jameelah staring at the photo.

Of course not, how would you?

I don’t know, on Kurfürstenstrasse maybe.

That’s enough, I say ripping the photo out of her hand.

Just imagine, says Jameelah, picture us on Kurfürsten sitting on our usual electrical box and then all of a sudden your father comes past, that would be something.

That would not be something, I say, shut up.

Take it easy, says Jameelah.

Take it easy my ass.

Gingerly she takes the photo from me again and looks at it for a long time.

Be happy, she says, at least you still have a father. Mine can’t ever pop up somewhere, not even on Kurfürsten.

It doesn’t do me any good. If you don’t hear from somebody they might as well be dead.

Bullshit, says Jameelah, if you really wanted to you could see him. Or at least write to him.

I wanted to, I say, because of the ring.

Then do it. Just call him. That’s what I’d do. I’d tell him off. Just up and leaving his family like that.

Call him, I don’t know. I’m not sure I have the nerve.

Does you mother have an address book?

Yeah.

I’ll bet your mother has his number in it.

Why would she? They don’t have anything to do with each other.

Parents have that sort of information, especially when they’re enemies. Believe me parents who are fighting with each other are more tightly bound together than parents who get along.

Jameelah stands up and swats the cookie crumbs off herself.

Come on, show me the address book.

When we’re in front of Mama and Rainer’s bedroom I knock before I open the door just to be safe but there’s nobody there and the bed is freshly made, the decorative quilt is even on top, that must have been Rainer. There’s a table next to the window with a small TV on it and beneath the TV is a drawer where Mama keeps the remote and the TV magazine. Underneath the magazine is her address book.

Here, I say handing Jameelah the book with my heart pounding.

What’s his name, she asks.

Jameelah sits cross-legged on the bed, wets her pointer finger and starts leafing through the book. I watch over her shoulder as she goes through G, H, I, the quilt is all rumpled, hopefully nobody comes home, I think, Mama doesn’t like it when we go into her room.

There he is, Joachim, right below my number. Funny, eh, that we’re right next to each other, says Jameelah grinning, come on you’re going to call him now.

My head starts to throb.

You’re nuts, I say.

Why?

I haven’t spoken to him in forever.

All the more reason, says Jameelah.

I can’t.

Come on, at the end of the day he’s just your dad!

No, I say, there is no chance.

Fine, says Jameelah grabbing the pen on the table and writing the number on her arm, then I’ll call him

Together we smooth out the quilt and go back into my room. I carefully close the door.

Like the old days, says Jameelah changing the settings on her phone so the number is anonymous.

What do you mean like the old days?

Prank calls. Good afternoon we just wanted to notify you that you won the lottery. Your house will be demolished today. Remember?

It’s not like the old days, I say, and what do you want to say to him anyway?

Not sure yet, says Jameelah typing the number and turning up the volume. I sway nervously back and forth on my bed. I hear it ringing.

Hello?

He’s there on the line, from one second to the next suddenly there on the phone, but somebody must have stuffed an insane amount of cotton in my ears because all of a sudden I can barely hear anything and the blood rushes at the speed of light into my head and then back down to my legs, everything pulses and whooshes and jumps, heart and lungs and stomach. As if from very far away I hear Jameelah talking to Papa.

Hello Joachim, so, how’s it going?

Who is this, I hear Papa say.

Come on, says Jameelah acting surprised, don’t you recognize me anymore?

I don’t believe so, says Papa and laughs.

It’s been years, says Jameelah.

It’s been a light year since the last time I heard Papa laugh, exactly one light year, the living room was dark, I was on his lap, pretzel crumbs everywhere, the TV flickering in front of us showing a movie where Bud Spencer is punching everybody. I can still hear the sounds distinctly, Bud Spencer’s fists landing and Papa laughing.

I’ll give you three guesses, says Jameelah.

Papa laughs again and this time he sounds unsettled.

I really don’t know, I hear him say, there’s a rustling sound on the line as if the wind has just blown into the mic on his phone.

I’m sorry, says Papa, I’m afraid you must have dialled the wrong number.

No, I definitely have not.

Hang up, I whisper but Jameelah doesn’t listen.

Make like a sundial and count only the hours when the world is bright.

Excuse me, asks Papa.

Make like a sundial, says Jameelah again, and count only the hours when the world is bright. What kind of stupid expression is that anyway?

It’s dead quiet on the other end of the phone. My head and heart pound.

Nini is that you, asks Papa.

Before Jameelah can answer I grab the phone.

Papa?

Nini, he says again, is that you?

Yeah Papa, it’s me.

Suddenly I have a horrible squeaky voice.

My God has something happened, where is your mother?

No idea.

Is everything okay?

Yes, I say.

What a scare you gave me dear child, says Papa, I thought it was something serious.

To be honest I don’t really understand what he’s talking about with a scare and something serious. I would love to ask that and a thousand other things. I close my eyes and try to form a sentence but my mind is completely empty and just like that loose thread and the action figures in the drawer the words get all tangled up in my lungs, in my throat, in the air.

There’s a rustling on the line again.

I’m on a train, says Papa, I can’t hear you very well.

I can’t hear you well either, I say.

He answers something but his voice and some of the words break up into unintelligible snippets and at some point the call is dropped and there’s nothing more than the radio silence of a dead zone. Papa is gone. There’s a beep and I hold the warm phone in my hands for a while longer, it feels a bit like a warm hand, I think, like the still-warm hand of someone who’s just died, since hanging up is a bit like dying, hanging up is a little death.

Fucking dead zones, says Jameelah, come on call back.

No, I say and I realize that my voice is back to normal.

A thousand things go through my head, all the things and questions I wanted to ask, all the tangled up words are suddenly lined up like toy soldiers, perfectly straight lines, rifles aligned with their feet, standing at attention forming perfect sentences. I wonder if he still has the key chain I made for him out of bottle caps in kindergarten, whether Chico is still around and Grandma Muelsig, why he sent me the
Bodyguard
soundtrack, whether it was supposed to be a sign, you know, like I’ll protect you even if only from a distance, and why he didn’t just take me with him instead of protecting me from a distance. At least he could have asked me. But then again maybe he didn’t want me to go with him, maybe I was little and irritating and useless, dirty and tangled up like the stuff in the drawer of junk, like Mama’s clothes in the basement or Rainer’s useless electrical devices, the kind of stuff you weed out when you move because you don’t want it at a new apartment.

You okay, asks Jameelah.

I don’t know. Strange situation. It’s been so long since I spoke to him. And it was all so sudden.

At least you have his number now, says Jameelah, you can call him whenever you want. It’s great.

Yeah, I say, that’s true, even though I know I never will. I’ll never call Papa again and then it occurs to me that the reason I wanted to talk to him was the ring. Fuck that ring, what business is it of mine, Mama’s whining about the ring, why should I care whether Papa took the thing or not and then I catch myself wishing that I really had met Papa on Kurfürsten. Sure, there would have been trouble, Mama and Rainer would have found out and the school principal, and Papa would be incredibly disappointed in me, all of that is true. But at least he would have to have thought about me and the fact that he had a daughter out there somewhere, one who got herself into a lot of shit, and then he’d have to worry about me like it or not. At least for one single moment he’d have to worry about me.

Noura always says you should do something nice once in a while, something that belongs just to you and you alone. Today I’m going to do something nice, and all by myself. Mama and Jessi aren’t home, they said goodbye this morning and Mama gave me twenty euros before they took off and another twenty for the taxi.

My rolling suitcase, the one I got for the school ski trip, is packed and waiting in the hall. I look at the time, I can only eat and drink for exactly one more hour and then not until tomorrow when everything’s all done, but I’m so worked up that I haven’t been able to eat since breakfast anyway. I take my suitcase and go down to the street and wave down a taxi. I’ve never been in a taxi by myself, the best I ever did was once together with Rainer but luckily Rainer has the late shift today.

When I’m in front of the hospital I fish around in my trouser pocket for the doctor’s referral. A girl is sitting at the entrance, she’s not much older than me, maybe sixteen or so, but she looks like a real nurse, she’s wearing a white smock with a white cardigan over it. She hands me a clipboard and I have to fill out all sorts of forms. Once I’m done with that another nurse comes over to me, an older one.

You’re far too early, she says taking my suitcase and putting her arm around my shoulders. We walk down the hall together. The walls are painted from floor to ceiling but not the way Nico does it, the way sick children would, sick kids who are bored. There’s a pink rhino, a yellow crocodile, a smiling crab with huge pincers, a colourful clown and next to that a black guy saying to the clown, I don’t have anything against people of colour. It’s the worst joke I’ve heard in I don’t know how long, but as I’m walking by and read the speech bubble I find it somehow funny, it’s so harmless.

The nurse opens the door next to the clown and there are two beds in the room. The one in the back, by the window, is empty but there’s someone in the closer bed, I don’t know if it’s a boy or girl, I mean I could probably tell if I looked but all I can do is stare at the legs in the bed, they distract me from anything else. The legs are charred, born to a crisp you could say in O-language, it would be a bit of an exaggeration but you’re allowed to exaggerate in O-language, in fact O-language is made for exaggerating because you use it either for a laugh or because things are way too cross and mossed up and regular language just can’t express how cross and mossed up things are, but anyway the legs are burned.

This is your bed here, says the nurse pointing to the empty bed. She pulls up the shade and opens the window, sun streams in, I have to squint. Outside is a big park with lots of trees and in between the trees are bushes with white flowers, the only thing missing is a lake, then it would be like it is in Italy.